Anthony Chiasson, the founder of hedge fund Level Global, started getting illegal insider tips in 2008 when the $4 billion firm was going through a rough patch, a key government witness told a jury yesterday.

The witness, Sam Adondakis, a former analyst who worked for Chiasson, said he told his boss tips on Dell came straight from the tech giant.

One Dell tip helped Level Global bag $53 million in profits, the government alleges.

“Where did you say the Dell contact worked when speaking to Mr. Chiasson?” prosecutor John Zach asked Adondakis.

“At Dell,” Adondakis replied.

The analyst is cooperating in the government’s last outstanding insider-trading trial against Chiasson and Todd Newman, a money manager at Diamondback.

Adondakis stumbled upon the Dell illegal tips, he said, when he discovered his analyst pals — Jesse Tortora of Diamondback and Fayad Abassi of Neuberger Berman — had an inside contact at the computer maker.

Adondakis told the Manhattan federal court jury that he asked the pair if he could get in on the action.

They said OK, he testified, and within weeks confidential information on Dell’s earnings were being passed to Adondakis by Tortora, who received it from another Neuberger analyst, Sandy Goyal, Adondakis said.

Goyal, who has pleaded guilty, testified Monday that he received the information from Dell employee Rob Ray.

The Dell tip that netted the firm millions wasn’t without its drama.

On Aug. 27, the day before Dell announced its results, Chiasson, Level Global co-founder David Ganek, and Greg Brenner, fund executive, held a conference call about their Dell position.

At the time, Adondakis, on vacation in the Hamptons, was sitting down to breakfast with his girlfriend, he said yesterday.

Adondakis said he remembers the conference call well because his girlfriend “was annoyed” by the conversation, which took him away from their meal for a good 40 minutes.

Neither Ganek nor Brenner has been charged with wrongdoing. Ganek’s lawyer said he “never had any idea and is quite predictably outraged that an employee was passing off his own work with what he now reveals was inside information.”